


Thessaly

by Gammarad



Category: The Sandman (Comics)
Genre: Ancient Greece, Astronomy, Gen, Greek pantheon, Mentioned Femslash, Mentioned Het, Time Travel, Witchcraft, Witches, mentioned slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-07
Updated: 2020-02-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:40:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22397224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gammarad/pseuds/Gammarad
Summary: What, after all, happened to the Thessalian witches?
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5
Collections: Past Imperfect Future Unknown 2019





	Thessaly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Miss_M](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/gifts).



> This is not a love story, though it tells of a witch forming a romantic attachment and believing she has fallen in love. This is not a tale of time travel fix-it, though it tells of a witch traveling through time and believing she can thereby avert a catastrophe. 
> 
> This is a story of a fated emancipation. It is the story of Thessaly.

In the days when Pompey the Great ruled Rome, the land of Thessaly in the Roman province of Achaea was home to a powerful and feared coven of witches. 

The greatest of the Thessalian witches and their leader was Aglaonike, whose name meant the Victory of Wisdom. Her name served her well and she had accrued fame throughout the neighboring nations for her power over the heavens.

Her daughter's name was a secret. Aglaonike, in perhaps a dangerous imitation of Demeter, always called her daughter "girl," though it had been a hundred years since she bore her. 

Such was their power that the witches looked however they wished. They were human, or derived from human, but carrying and wielding so much power had changed them. Unlike the ordinary folk around them, the Thessalian witches did not visibly age. Aglaonike looked no older in her 180th year than she had in her 18th. 

There were sixteen witches in the coven, several older than Aglaonike herself. Fourteen had been chosen from her peers and elders to be initiated into her secret rites when she was young. Though those who feared her would find it hard to believe, there had been a time when she had felt the need for the company of women who understood her, and sharing her power was the only way she had known to fill that need. 

She had shown them her discoveries about the ties between the heavens and the gods. That was the key to her wisdom, her comprehension that the mechanics of the heavens controlled the power of many of the deities of the pantheon known in that part of the world. Especially Selene, the moon, Eos and Astraeus, the dawn and dusk, and their descendants, and the gods who lay among the constellations. 

Her daughter knew all about this, since her mother often told her how fortunate she was to be the daughter of so powerful a witch, in a position to learn so much, become so powerful. 

A hundred years old and a girl, which was simply how things were, and perhaps would always be, not that it was a reasonable state of affairs, but magic allowed one to be unreasonable at length. It would have been nice, the girl thought, to have been able like most heirs to imagine she would one day inherit, but that did not seem likely. 

Aglaonike gave the girl a list of her day's tasks over the breakfast which the girl had prepared for them both. The first meal was not much labor: each morning the girl cut the bread, which Aglaonike's slaves had baked the day before, and set out portions of figs and olives. Aglaonike did not like slaves inside her house. The girl did not much enjoy cooking, so unless Aglaonike insisted, she did not make pancakes; they ate day old bread, dipping the slices in wine to soften them.

"You must speak to Glauke and Cynara about their progress in the ritual they are creating for the Macedonian," Aglaonike said, "and with Rhodanthe about the ceremonies for the crops this summer. Myrto will be here in the afternoon for some ingredients she needs." She listed the herbs and substances that the girl would need to preserve and package for her fellow witch. 

Each task was important, and Aglaonike stressed that it was an honor, that the girl was the only one besides herself who Aglaonike trusted with the work. It nonetheless kept the girl from doing anything she might like to spend her time on. She must weave, she must supervise the work of the slaves in the fields and gardens of the estate and in the detached kitchens where the bread was baked and the meat prepared and so on. 

The magical workrooms that were not safe for a slave to enter must be cleaned by the girl. Aglaonike was never satisfied with her own efforts at doing so. She insisted that the girl had a natural talent for cleaning up after witchly workings. The girl believed that her mother simply did not wish to clean up after herself and had found an excuse for why she should not be the one to do it.

The girl would have preferred relaxing over a bottle of wine and enjoying the fruits of the spell she had invented to duplicate any written material she might like. Aglaonike had not thought of making such a spell, and the girl wanted to keep it that way because Aglaonike was secretive about her writing. The girl would not have learned half so much from her mother had her mother's wishes been respected about what of her notes the girl had been able to read.

But it wasn't only Aglaonike's writings that the girl read. She had used her spell to copy books in Aeolian from most of the witches, in Latin from Roman travelers who carried such things far more often than other men, in Koine from visiting scholars from other parts of Greece who came seeking knowledge from the people of Thessaly. 

Most of the written works she had managed to copy were hidden in a magically concealed part of her room. Few had yet been read because the girl was too busy doing Aglaonike's endless chores.

Everything for that day was finished before sunset. Myrto had departed satisfied with her ingredients; the other witches had all been visited and consulted on whatever the topic Aglaonike had prescribed. Now finally the girl could relax and read the copy of the scroll that had scandalized Athens two years before... she smiled, reading a truly stirring description of a near riot due to the loss of the valuable contents of a honey warehouse, when she heard her mother's voice. 

"Girl! I need you for a ritual. Zosima and I will join you." The girl sighed, interrupted, and went to her mother's side.

Her mother explained the ritual to Zosima and the girl listened. "It is the time of the disappearance of Stilbon from the skies. We call him down to do our bidding."

* * *

  


Stilbon was a quiet captive at first. Having been bound to Aglaonike's service and to obey any order from a Thessalian witch, he -- the deity representing the celestial planet nearest Helios -- orbited the girl's mother as he had the great sun. 

One of the secrets Aglaonike had taught to the girl was the hidden truth of the heavens, that Helios was the center of everything and Gaia herself circled around him, his size many times hers. Selene, the first and greatest deity who Aglaonike had bound, in turn circled Gaia. Stilbon's brothers, the Planetes, had paths around Helios similar to Gaia's, though their power was much less than hers. The girl wondered sometimes why that was. She did not believe the reason she had been given by her mother: that it was the presence of people on Gaia's surface that imbued the great goddess with so much might. 

Stilbon, though, was clearly a lesser power, however close to great Helios he trod in his natural place. When they had summoned him, he had been going into hiding from the sky, which meant he could be held -- for thirty-six days, no one would see his path across the heavens. It was safer, Aglaonike had always told the girl, to bind the gods when they were going to be unseen anyway. She only called down the moon on the nights that were destined to be moonless. Anything else called down destruction, she said, one of the Endless who were not to be trifled with.

The girl didn't see how Aglaonike could consider anyone greater than herself, but as she was not Aglaonike, she did not argue. Her mother, indeed, was not to be trifled with.

Aglaonike set Stilbon to teach the girl the ways of the heavens. There was a good deal more geometry to understand and the girl had never had the gift for it that her mother had. Stilbon was, the girl found, a charming and engaging tutor. She found that the geometry her mother had managed to teach her, and the many proofs and theorems her mother had tried and failed to teach her, made much more sense when _he_ explained them. 

Soft voiced, he teased her when she drew the wrong line or the wrong conclusion. The girl found she liked being teased like that, infuriating as it was, because it pushed her to do better, so much more than her mother's condescending pity at her slowness at mathematics. When she found the right answer to one of his problems, he put his hand on her arm, the warmth of his skin soaking into her very pleasantly. 

A warm gold, was Stilbon. She pulled away, unaccustomed to uninvited touch, even though it had been pleasant. A man putting his hand on her was something her mother had taught her to fear. Her mother preferred women, especially after the unpleasantness that had resulted in the girl's conception a century before. 

The girl, however, did not feel any inclination to the sort of affection offered to her by the other witches. Her mother forbade her from pursuing men; she must remain a maiden for magical reasons, as her unspoiled moon blood and physical presence was needed for many sorts of rituals, most vitally the calling down of the moon.

It was not truly necessary. Another maiden could be found; any witch could perform the ceremony with herself and any two other women who fit the roles. Aglaonike could find a maid and a mother and be the crone, or find a maid and be the mother and another of the witches could play the crone's role. But the girl's mother preferred not to teach her magic to newcomers. The girl was the newest and the last of the Thessalian witches. 

"Please," Stilbon said. He stretched a hand toward her, not touching, but asking to touch. 

"You can't expect me to open my legs for you, so why?" 

"Your touch comforts me. You are kind." 

It was true that the girl brought Stilbon food, healed his injuries when he was damaged carrying out Aglaonike's commands, laid a bed out in front of the fire for him, coaxed it to burn brighter to keep him warm when his power was exhausted serving her mother's will. She supposed that could seem to him like kindness. "For your comfort, then." Her mother had told her to see to the god's comfort. She took his hand.

It seemed to strengthen him. "You are not shy," he said. "Why then are you so quick to deny yourself any pleasures you might have with me?" His fingers stroked her arm. Perhaps it was like petting a dog. The girl did find that a comfort at times. His eyes dipped away from hers as he licked his lips. 

"Why do you think I would find pleasure in you?" Usually it was men who found pleasure in women, or one woman in another, one man in another. The girl didn't see much of women finding pleasure in men. She was not sure she had ever seen that as the way of things. 

And her life had been long, if not much varied in experience. She felt sure she would have seen it. There certainly were women who pretended pleasure at the touch of men, but it was never, in the girl's memory, sincere. Oh, they might enjoy being pursued, many seemed to, truly. But not the act itself.

* * *

  


The unfairness of Stilbon's enslavement to Aglaonike burned in the girl almost as brightly as the suppressed fury at her own subsumption to her mother's will. With the power the greatest Thessalian sorceress possessed, it seemed for the longest time there was nothing to be done for either of them.

At first she had resented having to care for him. It was yet another imposition on her time due to her mother's distrust of slaves and resulting reliance on the girl to do all the necessary menial tasks of the household. But caring for him began to be something the girl enjoyed. Stilbon made it so. 

There was nothing like appreciation after one's work had gone unappreciated for decades. Compliments, gratitude -- the girl had not thought she cared about such things, but it seemed she did. Desires blossomed in her heart that she had thought disdainfully of in others. 

He called her kind, so she began to want to be kind. He said she was beautiful, so she began to think she was beautiful. She had always wanted to learn, thought herself incapable of learning some of the deepest mysteries, and he showed her a way in to their secret interior revelations. In his words, in his hands, geometry changed from opaque to translucent, verging on transparency. 

In short, she was infatuated, in love with this captive god. Though he returned to the sky for thirty or fifty days at a time, she and her mother and Zosima would call him back as soon as his star hid in the heavens, and he would serve her mother again, and she would care for him, and learn from him. 

She allowed him to teach her not only mathematics, but also simpler, older arts that it seemed only he could explain in a way that fired her imagination and her loins. She thought she made him burn as hotly for her, although he was reluctant at times; when she asked why, he gave her to understand that it was fear that her mother would discover their relationship. The girl also did not want her mother to know. 

Not that she feared her mother's censure, or so she told herself, but that she wanted something of her own. Her mother would only have cared if she lost her ritual virginity. So she remained a maid, in the sense that the moon cared about, her maidenhood intact, but she knew the touch of a man in every way that mattered, and the error of her previous belief that there was no pleasure for a woman in a man's caress.

In short, they were, the girl knew with her whole century-old girl's heart, in love, and as a woman in love, she would free her man from his bondage.

She began to read her copies of her mother's books with this singular goal in her mind. 

If there was a lingering doubt, a whisper of the ancient witch's wisdom warning her of the risk a god unbound among mortals might pose, she refused to acknowledge it.

* * *

  


It took a few weeks. In that time, Stilbon was sent back to his post in the heavens to serve his celestial purpose, and the girl missed him. She looked forward to his return. The ceremony to call him back down from his wandering across the sky was more than twenty days away when she found the last piece of the puzzle she needed, and four days away when she finalized her plans. 

Her participation in the ritual was routine. Aglaonike always had the girl play the maiden's part. Because of this, the girl would simply change the initial call to be that he rejoin their world rather than that he be rebound to Aglaonike's service. The words she would use were very similar, and the girl thought that, after nearly a double handful of such rites, Aglaonike might not be listening that closely. 

To help insure that, she arranged a distraction, one that Aglaonike would need to work to focus through and that would take notice off her during the alternative recitation.

If the third witch noticed, the girl thought she wouldn't interrupt the ceremony to ask about it. By the time they were done, it would be too late. Stilbon would be free.

Her excitement grew as she contemplated what might happen when Aglaonike realized Stilbon was free. The girl had spoken of her plan with him secretly one night when Aglaonike was out. The god had listened avidly. He was clearly eager to change the terms of his agreement with the witch -- he and the girl had created a plan, a negotiation of terms, that would give him more freedom in Aglaonike's service in return for staying. 

She had originally thought he would flee, and she had felt a pang -- she would have missed him terribly -- but being bound made him so unhappy, and she wanted him to be happy. Thinking he would flee was making her slow to find any way to free him. She had tried and tried and failed, even with copies of all her mother's books. And then he had explained that he couldn't leave her, they were meant to be together -- it sounded so right and true as he said it. The girl believed him. They were meant to be.

And knowing that he would not go had certainly made it easier to find the right change that would keep the rites functional in calling Stilbon down, but not bind him. Aglaonike had never done such a thing. Every god she called out of the skies, she bound to obedience. But the girl had discovered a way. 

She was so proud of herself.

The night before Stilbon's light would disappear again behind Helios, the girl had trouble falling asleep for excitement. The insects around her window sang softly, their voices that usually lulled her to sleep, this night keeping her awake.

A different sound. She had drifted a bit, but on hearing it came instantly alert. Slowly, she rolled over, imitating one asleep to her best ability.

"Girl, it is I," a voice said, creaky and distorted by pain, but the girl recognized it instantly anyway -- her mother's voice. 

"Mother!" The girl sat up, greatly surprised. Her mother had not entered her room so abruptly while she slept -- or attempted to sleep -- in a very long while, and something was certainly wrong for her voice to sound like that. It was dark. She snapped a light spell into being.

Aglaonike was in horrifying shape. She looked thin and wretched, her hair falling out in clumps, her skin drawn and greenish-pale in the witchlight's glow.

"I have not much time," she whispered. "I have come back to warn you."

"Come back," the girl echoed. "I did not know you had gone, Mother. Why did you not tell me you were leaving? There is a ceremony tomorrow!" This was going to disrupt her plans. She wondered that she was more concerned with that alteration than with her mother's condition. 

"Back to before," Aglaonike said urgently. "Before you freed the god and destroyed us all. He tempted you, girl, told you lies of love, I should have known. He did not mean them. As soon as you freed him, he took you -- devoured your power and left you dead. And then he used your power to kill the rest of us."

The girl felt cold. Aglaonike knew? And this -- this was how she chose to try to stop it from happening? A fable about the result? "You easily could stop me yourself, tomorrow, in the ritual, since you know," she accused.

"There is not enough time," Aglaonike said. She reached a hand out, bent into a claw with pain, to clutch at the girl's wrist -- and her hand touched nothing. It was as if the girl had become a ghost.

Or perhaps it was Aglaonike who was the ghost. The girl muttered a spell to touch as solid the spirit flesh, and tried to take her mother's hand. Even with that aid their hands passed through each other without any sensation at all.

"How," the girl asked, and thought then of a spell she had seen and not understood, one that traced the paths of the stars backward against their motion in the heavens. 

"It must have been far enough," Aglaonike gasped, "because you still live. Don't do it, girl. Don't doom us all." Her eyes fluttered closed and she slipped to the ground, then slowly faded until nothing of her was left at all.

 _I have come back._ Returned not to a place, but to a moment, to yesterday, to days before? The girl had never even thought of such a thing, and yet here it was, seen and believed, and even an inkling of how, though the spell's finer details entailed math still beyond her comprehension. 

Aglaonike's accusations echoed the suspicions the girl had refused to entertain, made it impossible for the girl to repress them any longer. Nor would Aglaonike have appeared so weakened in front of her daughter if there had been any choice at all. The girl found she believed the tale her mother had told. Which meant, she mused, turning over the implications in her cool thoughts from which the heat of infatuation had departed so swiftly, that Stilbon's power combined with her own would be enough to defeat her mother and the other Thessalian witches.

Her so powerful mother, who bound and commanded the gods themselves.

Mind whirling with possibility, the girl thought of tiny changes to her plan. Not to free Stilbon, who, it seemed, had lied to her, whose love was as false as that of human men she'd met... no, not to free him, but to do to him what he would have done to her. Take his power. Use it to free herself, at last.

**Author's Note:**

> The Thessalian witches are a real thing, at least, a real myth written about from before medieval times, and Aglaonike seems to have been a historical figure as an astronomer. So I based their magic on astronomy and ancient Greek gods. It seemed fitting.


End file.
